into that pact to seduce me.”
That brought his shoulders straight up and wiped all expression from his face. “Seduce you? But—”
“Am I making you uncomfortable?” Kate asked with pretend solicitousness. “Are you perhaps feeling as if your privacy has been violated by my inquiry? Now, perhaps, you can imagine how it feels for me to have my virtue discussed all over London.”
“Actually—”
“Don’t bother protesting. Tell the truth. Did you linger here, thinking you would have me in bed?”
“No!” he said in injured tones. Then he pressed his lips together, as if tasting something bitter. “To be perfectly truthful,” he said in a subdued tone, “and come to think of it, yes, but—”
“My answer is ‘no, thank you.’ I already have everything a lady could wish for.”
“Really?”
He was watching her intently now. She could imagine him reporting this speech to his friends. If he did, the sum of the gossip would be her words, not her clothing. Harcroft would hear, but he’d think nothing of it. Just the story of another man who failed to collect. Kate counted items off on her fingers. “I have a fulfilling life filled with charitable work. A doting father. Virtually unlimited pin money.” She tapped her little finger and shot him another disarming smile. “Oh, yes. And my husband lives six thousand miles away. Now why in heaven’s name do all you fools believe I should want to complicate my life with a messy, illicit love affair?”
He froze, then recovered enough to reach up and rub the tawny bristle on his chin. “Would you know,” he said softly, “my solicitor was right. I should have shaved first.”
“I assure you, your slovenly appearance makes not one iota of difference.”
“It’s not the beard.” His hand clenched briefly into a fist at his side, and then relaxed.
She felt a grim delight at that sign of confusion. It wasn’t fair to take all men to task for her husband’s failings—but then, this one had set out to seduce her, and she was not in the mood to be kind. “You seem out of sorts,” she said, imbuing her voice with a false charity. “And foolish. And bumbling. Are you quite sure you’re not my errant husband?”
“Well, that’s the thing.” He glanced at her almost apologetically. And then he took another step toward her.
This close, she could see his chest expand on an inhale. He reached for her hand. She had time to pull away. She ought to pull away. His thumb and forefinger caught her wrist, as gently as if he were catching a dried leaf as it fell from a tree. His fingers found the precise spot where her glove ended and her flesh began. She might have been that leaf, ready to combust in one heated moment.
She desperately needed to escape, to reconstruct the feeling of success that had been so rudely taken from her. He smiled at her again, and his eyes twinkled ruefully. And suddenly, horribly, she knew what he was going to say. She knew why his eyes had seemed so unnaturally familiar.
She did know this man. She had imagined meeting him a thousand ways in the past years. Sometimes she had said nothing. Other times she’d delivered cutting speeches. She always brought him to his knees, eventually, in apology, while she looked on regally.
There was nothing regal about her now. In all of her imaginings, not once had she met him wearing an ill-fitting servant’s cloak, with smudges on her face.
Her wrist still burned where he touched her, and Kate jerked her hand away.
“You see,” he said dryly, “I’m quite sure that I am your husband. And I’m not six thousand miles away any longer.”
CHAPTER TWO
SIX THOUSAND MILES. Three years. Ned Carhart had convinced himself that when he returned, everything would be different.
But no. Nothing had changed—least of all, his wife.
She stared at him, her lips parted in shock, as if he had announced that he had a penchant for playing vingt-et-un with ravens. She drew her cloak about her. No doubt she wanted to shield herself from his gaze. And like that, it all came back—all the ragged danger of that old intensity—burning into the palms of his hands.
Her cloak was dusty all over and, thank God, falling about her as it did, it hid the curves of her waist. After all these years of careful control, the check he performed was almost perfunctory. Yes. He still controlled his own emotions; they did not jerk him around, like a dog on a chain.
But then, it had been a long while since he’d felt these particular emotions. Ten minutes in his wife’s presence, and already she’d begun to befuddle him again.
“You really didn’t recognize me,” he said.
She stared at him, suddenly mute and uneasy.
No, of course not. All that easy conversation? That, she’d produced for a stranger. A stranger who she believed had intended to seduce her, no less. Ned scrubbed his hand through his hair.
“Two years? There’s been a wager running for two years to seduce you?”
“What did you suppose would happen? You left me three months after our wedding.” Kate turned away. She took two breaths. He could see the rigid line of her shoulder even under all that wool. And he waited, waited for an outpouring of some kind. A diatribe; an accusation. For anything.
But when she turned back, only the clutch of her gloved hand on her cloak betrayed any unease.
That smile—that damnably enchanting smile—peeked out again. “And here I supposed your departure was the masculine equivalent of sounding the bugle to presage the hunt for your fellow gentlemen. You could not have declared it hunting season on Lady Kathleen Carhart any more effectively if you’d taken out an advertisement in the gossip circulars.”
“That’s certainly not what I intended.”
No. His thinking had taken a different cast altogether. When he’d left for China, he’d been young and idiotic; old enough to insist that he was an adult, and not wise enough to realize how far he was from the truth. He’d spent his early years playing the dissolute and useless spare to his cousin’s rigid, rule-bound heir.
He’d made himself sick on the uselessness of himself. When he’d married, he had hungered to prove that he wasn’t a child. That he could take on any task, no matter how difficult, and demonstrate that he had grown into a strong and dependable man.
He’d done it, too.
One woman—one who had already sworn to honor and obey him—shouldn’t have seemed so insurmountable a prospect.
Ned shook his head and looked at Kate. “No,” he repeated. “When I left, I wasn’t trying to send any message. It didn’t have anything to do with you at all.”
“Oh.” Her lips whitened and she looked ahead. “Well. Then. I suppose that’s good to know.”
She turned around and began to walk away. Ned felt the pit of his stomach sink, as if he’d said something utterly stupid. He couldn’t think what it was.
“Kate,” he called. She stopped. She did not look at him, but there was something—perhaps the line of her profile—that suggested a certain wariness.
He swallowed. “That wager. Did anyone succeed?”
She stiffened slightly, and then her shoulders lowered in defeat. Now she did turn around.
“Oh, Mr. Carhart.” It was the first time she had spoken his name since he’d returned, and she imbued those few syllables with all the starch of sad formality. “As I recall, I vowed to forsake all others, keeping only unto you, for as long as we both should live.”
He winced. “I wasn’t questioning your honor.”